Lester Holt

SEOUL, South Korea — A senior North Korean defector has told NBC News that the country’s “desperate” dictator is prepared to use nuclear weapons to strike the United States and its allies. Thae Yong Ho is the most high profile North Korean defector in two decades, meaning he is able to give a rare insight into the secretive, authoritarian regime. According to Thae, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is “desperate in maintaining his rule by relying on his [development of] nuclear weapons and ICBM.…

Boston police officer Kenneth Grubbs grew up in the community he now serves: Roxbury, one of the city’s roughest neighborhoods. Knowing it as well as he does, and being a youth service officer who’s been on the force for 32 years, he knew a change needed to be made. “The community didn’t want to approach the police,” he told NBC News’ Lester Holt. “We weren’t approachable.” As the department was trying to find different ways to gain people’s trust, they brought out an old ice cream truck. Seein…

Vice President Mike Pence vowed that the U.S. would protect itself from nuclear-armed North Korea’s threats by taking whatever “action is necessary to defend our homeland.” In an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt on the sidelines of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Pence made clear that the U.S. was not ruling out military options as tensions continued to roil the Korean Peninsula. “We’re going to continue to put all the pressure to bear economically and diplomatically, while preser…

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — The father of American college student Otto Warmbier, who died shortly after being released from prison in North Korea last year, said he hopes his family’s presence at the Olympics is a physical reminder of the power and brutality of the Kim regime. “I’m telling the truth about the regime’s treatment of my son. But guess what, they do this to countless other people,” Fred Warmbier said in an exclusive interview with NBC News on the sidelines of the PyeongChang Winter…

This article is part of the NBC News Justice for All series. ANGOLA, La. — His name was George Del Vecchio. On Nov. 22, 1995, I watched from behind a window at Illinois’ Stateville Correctional Center as Del Vecchio took his last breath. He was executed for the murder of a young boy 18 years earlier. I was a media witness to that execution. As the other witnesses and I were escorted out of the prison that dark early morning, I began to wonder — was the world any safer because George Del Vecchio…

TEL AVIV — Relatives of U.S. citizens feared to have been taken hostage by Hamas urged the Biden administration Tuesday to help free their loved ones, saying they had yet to receive “formal communication” from the White House. Rachel Goldberg, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, said at a news conference here that the last words she received from her son came in a message telling her he loved her and that he was “sorry.” Goldberg-Polin was among thousands of revelers when Hamas terrorists de…

For civil rights attorney and renowned social justice activist Bryan Stevenson, it’s not enough to know the history of slavery and the centuries-old struggles of Black people in America. He wants people to see it. Feel it. Touch it. A new park in Montgomery, Alabama, was conceived to do just that, as visitors of the breathtaking Freedom Monument Sculpture Park will be treated to “an immersive experience” along 17 acres above the Alabama River, which was a primary route to transport enslaved Afri…

4 days ago ... Lester Holt looks back at pivotal political moments of upheaval then and now.

In an exclusive interview, the four private citizens described their five-day journey in orbit.

Live updates and developments about Hurricane Milton, which made landfall near Sarasota, Florida , after spawning tornadoes.